Danila Serafini - ENG
BRUNO WALPOTH
Rabbi Akiva says: “Silence is a fence to wisdom”. What more astonishing definition is able to grasp the meaning of Bruno Walpoth’s sculptures, if not this very one? There’s peace in his silence; it’s precisely this rarefied and surreal dimension that is inhabited by the creatures to whom he gives shape, and whom he models peremptorily and with perfection, after having carefully observed and studied reality.
He uses candid and resistant lime wood or lead leaf foils which he lays out on the wood and hammers as in an embossed work, like in “Walking alone”. Here it’s as if for a very brief moment flesh has turned into metal, a deaf and bleak metal that devours all thoughts and releases the weight of solitude and introspection; the skinny and bony face is moulded on the hollow spaces where the sculptor reveals himself. And when the eyes send deep desolate gleams or when they express astonishment and amazement, or, furthermore, when they are closed, it’s always the silent torment of doubt that we grasp from the artist’s soul.